She said, “Don’t dodge my question. Why is your father so…I don’t know, so loathsome to you? Do you think he purposely hurt my mother?”
Nick glanced at her briefly before turning back to study the road. In that glance, Katie felt the full impact of his eyes. They were as green as palm trees, and thickly lashed, and why she hadn’t been knocked overboard long before this by the sheer clarity and intensity of his gaze made her wonder if her libido had frozen along with her fingers and nose.
He had a very strong profile, all clean lines and determined thrust of chin, a man to be reckoned with. Maybe a man who figured everyone who wasn’t with him was against him.
She’d have to make sure she got him on her side. No trouble, right? She was a people person, a bartender for years, a Jill of all trades.
Did she have dreams? Of course. What would life be like without dreams? But she’d learned to put her dreams on a back burner. Money was, and had always been, tight and she’d kept her dreams close to her heart, guarding them against the reality of barely making ends meet. What little she had saved she’d used up financing the search for the truth concerning her father’s death. She wouldn’t have been able to afford this trip, for instance, if her veterinarian sister hadn’t put it on her credit card.
Katie couldn’t think about her father right now. It was still too painful. She’d get Nick to come around. She had to. All she needed was time, and judging from the weather, time was just what she had working on her side.
What about her mother? Did Caroline have time or was it already too late?
“Maybe we could share what information we have,” she said, attempting to calm herself down. The truck bounced through a gulley and she gritted her teeth as her leg throbbed anew.
“Let’s just get home first,” he said, driving over a small bridge.
At last the dark shadows of the mountains grew closer and the contours of a log house, glowing with light, smoke rising from its chimney, caught her attention. It was built on the edge of a small, iced-over lake complete with a short pier. A light mounted high on a pole beside the pier illuminated the falling snow. There were also a number of smaller cabins clustered near the main house, as well as a long building set off by itself. Every structure boasted steeply pitched green metal roofs, set in among a million trees, a setting so peaceful it should have calmed Katie’s nerves.
But in fact, the beauty and serenity just made her more antsy. What could they possibly get done out here? She’d jumped out of a frying pan into a fire—or out of an ice chest into a freezer—pick a metaphor, any one would do. And it was her own damn, impulsive fault.
“We’re here,” Nick said, slowing the truck.
“You own all this?”
“Yes.”
“It’s huge.”
“It was built by a painter back in 1950. He used to open it up in the summer for aspiring artists with enough cash to fly in and spend several weeks under his tutelage. I bought it from him four or five years ago.”
“Are you an artist too?” she asked.
He replied immediately. “No. My wife was.”
“Your wife—”
He stilled her with a swift, intense green glance. “She died two years ago,” he said, his voice as bleak as his expression.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” He pressed a button on the visor above his head and the door to a large garage rolled up and out of the way. Nick pulled inside, his headlights illuminating a couple of snowmobiles and a blue van. A door opposite suggested covered passage to the house. The door was closing and Nick was out of the truck before Katie could untangle her hands from her scarf. He flipped on an overhead light and the details of winter equipment like snowblowers, boots, sleds and snowshoes came into sharp focus.
He opened her door and once again she faced the long step down from the truck. Her leg ached at the prospect. “Are there other people here now?” Katie asked hopefully as she slid from her seat. Nick seemed to be prepared for her ungainly exit and caught her in a grip as solid as granite.
“Not in the winter. This time of year it’s just me and Helen, my housekeeper. And Lily, of course.”
“Nick, please talk to me about your father,” she said, gazing up into his eyes, imploring him to stop evading her questions. “Time is passing and my mother is missing.”
“I know,” he said. “But there’s a storm coming and no one will be going anywhere for a while. We almost always lose phone service in weather like this. In short, your problem will keep. I want to see if Lily is still awake.”
“Who’s Lily?”
“My daughter.” He reached past her and retrieved her suitcase, then opened the connecting door to what appeared to be an enclosed porch. A row of hooks held outerwear, a tray underneath caught the drips as snow melted. Baskets lined up on a shelf were filled with mittens, gloves and stocking caps. Nick pulled off his hat and tossed it into a basket; his gloves followed a second later. He unzipped his coat and took it off, carefully hanging it on an empty hook next to a pale yellow coat with a fur collar that was so tiny it had to belong to a child.
Katie took off her own coat and immediately missed its warm, cozy lining even though she wore a thick sweater underneath. Nick took it from her and hung it on a hook before parking himself on a bench and unlacing his boots.
“Are your feet wet?” he asked Katie. He pointed at her suitcase. “Do you have something dry and warm in there or do you need to borrow slippers?”
He was wearing a green flannel shirt that stretched across his shoulders as he moved. He was built splendidly, Katie saw, broad at the shoulder, narrow through the hips, tall and straight, sent from central casting to play the role of handsome, defensive, sexy recluse.
But he was real. Those eyes, that tenderness in his voice when his daughter’s name passed his lips, his single-minded straight-as-an-arrow determination to do things his own way in his own time—all man, all real and, probably, all obstacle.
“My feet are fine,” she said, looking down at her own boots. She’d been traveling the better part of two days to get here. Flights from Oregon to Washington, then on to Anchorage, Alaska. Then the bush-pilot flight to Frostbite. Now she was out here in the middle of nowhere, trying to get a man to talk, a man who obviously didn’t want to talk, and just how was she supposed to ever get home again?
And what about her mother?
As she folded her head scarf and straightened the gray wool sweater she wore over a light blue turtleneck shirt, she admitted that her head pounded, her leg ached, she was cold and hungry and frustrated. “Nick—” she said impatiently.
Once again he cut her off, this time by standing abruptly. He’d slipped on a pair of dry loafers. As he opened the door leading into the house, she picked up her suitcase and followed. What choice did she have?
Aromas of roasting meat and vegetables perfumed the room they entered, a kitchen full of rough wood beams and rich dark tiles. Some kind of fruit pie—apple?—sat cooling on a wooden
